V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:LS/v2;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

VLADIMIR ILYICH’S first reactions to the news of the revolution in Russia
are given in his letters to A. M. Kollontai of March 16 and 17, quoted
in Section III of our collection on pp. 299—502. In his letter of March 17, Vladimir
Ilyich says that together with Comrade Zinoviev he is working out
“theses”, the aim of which is to give a characterisation of the situation and to outline
“in the main” the immediate tasks of the Bolshevik Party. These “theses”
have been preserved in the archives of Comrade Zinoviev, in collaboration with whom they were
worked out by Vladimir Ilyich on March 17, new style. They can be regarded
as the first draft of the fundamental propositions of Bolshevik tactics
in the revolution of 1917.

LENIN.
DRAFT THESES OF MARCH 17.

The information available at the present moment, March 17,
1917, in Zurich from Russia is so scanty, and events are now developing so rapidly
in our country, that one can judge the situation
only with great caution.

Yesterday the telegrams represented the matter as if the tsar had already abdicated and the new
Octobrist-Cadet government had already concluded an agreement with other representatives of the Romanov
dynasty. Today there is news from England that the tsar has
not yet abdicated and that his whereabouts are unknown!

That means the tsar is making attempts to offer resistance, to organise a party
and perhaps an army for restoration; it is possible that to deceive
the people the tsar, if he succeeds in escaping from Russia or in getting
part of the military forces on his side, will come out with a manifesto
for an immediate separate peace, signed by him with Germany!

In such a situation the task of the proletariat is rather complicated.
There is no doubt that it must organise itself as well as possible,
gather its forces, arm itself, strengthen and develop its alliance with all sections of the working masses in the towns
and the countryside, in order to offer ruthless resistance to the tsarist
reaction and to crush the tsarist monarchy completely.

On the other hand, the new government, which has seized power
in Petrograd, or rather, wrested it from the hands of the victorious
proletariat, which had won it in a heroic and bloody struggle, consists of liberal
bourgeois and landowners, led by a representative of the democratic
peasantry and, possibly, of workers who have been carried away by the bourgeois
path and have forgotten internationalism—Kerensky.

The new government consists of avowed supporters and defenders of the imperialist war with Germany, i.e., the war in alliance with the imperialist governments
of England and France, a war for the sake of plunder and conquest of foreign
countries, Armenia, Galicia, Constantinople, etc.

The new government can give neither the peoples of Russia (nor the nations with which the war has brought us into contact) peace,
nor bread, nor complete freedom, and therefore the working class must
continue its struggle for socialism and for peace, must use
the new situation for this purpose and explain it to the broadest
popular masses.

The new government cannot give peace, both because it is the representative of the capitalists and landowners, and
because it is bound by treaties and financial obligations
with the capitalists of England and France. The Social-Democracy
of Russia, remaining faithful to internationalism, must therefore
first and foremost explain to the masses of the people, who are waiting for peace, the impossibility of achieving it under the present
government.

In its first address to the people (March 17) this government did not say a single word about the main and fundamental question
of the moment—about peace.

It keeps secret the predatory treaties concluded by tsarism with England, France, Italy,
Japan, etc.

It wants to hide from the people the truth about its war programme, about the fact that it is for the war, for victory over
Germany.

It is unable to do what is now necessary for the peoples: immediately and openly to propose to all belligerent
countries to conclude an armistice at once, and then to conclude peace
on the basis of the complete liberation of Poland and all dependent
and oppressed nations.

To achieve this a workers’ government is needed, in alliance, firstly, with the poorest mass
of the rural population; secondly, with the revolutionary workers
of all belligerent countries.

The new government cannot give the people bread. And no
freedom will satisfy the masses who are suffering hunger from the shortage
of supplies, from their bad distribution, and chiefly from the seizure
of them by the landowners and capitalists.
To give the people bread, revolutionary measures against the landowners and capitalists
are necessary, and only a workers’ government can carry out these measures.

Finally, the new government is unable to give the people
complete freedom either, although in its manifesto of March 17, 1917,
it speaks exclusively of political freedom, keeping silent about the other,
no less important questions. The new government has already made an attempt to come to an agreement with the Romanov
dynasty, for it proposed to recognise it, without regard to the will
of the people, on the basis of the abdication of Nicholas II and the appointment of one of the Romanov family as regent for his son.
The new government promises all sorts of freedoms in its manifesto, but
does not fulfil its direct and unconditional duty immediately
to put freedoms into effect, to introduce the election of officers, etc., by
the soldiers, to order elections to the City Duma of Petrograd, Moscow
and other cities on the basis of genuinely universal, and not only male,
suffrage, to open all state and public buildings for
people’s meetings, to order elections to all local institutions
and zemstvos on the basis of the same genuinely universal
suffrage, to abolish all restrictions on the rights of local selfgovernment, to abolish all officials appointed from above for
supervision over local self-government, to put into effect not only
freedom of conscience, but also freedom from religion, immediately
to separate the school from the church and free it from bureaucratic tutelage,
etc.

The entire manifesto of the new government of March 17 inspires the most complete distrust, for it consists only of promises
and does not introduce into life immediately a single one of the most urgent
measures which could and should be carried out at once.

The new government says not a word in its programme either
about the eight-hour working day and other economic improvements
in the condition of the workers, or about land for the peasants, about the transfer
to the peasants without compensation of all the landowners’ estates, thus revealing by its silence on these urgent questions its capitalist
and landowner nature.

Only a workers’ government, relying, firstly, on the vast
majority of the peasant population, on the agricultural workers
and the poorest peasants; secondly, on an alliance with the revolutionary
workers of all belligerent countries, can give the people peace,
bread and complete freedom.

The revolutionary proletariat cannot, therefore, regard the revolution
of March 1/14 otherwise than as its first, far from complete, victory on its great path, and cannot but set
itself the task of continuing the struggle for the conquest of a democratic
republic and socialism.

To fulfil this task the proletariat and the R.S.D.L.P.
must, in the first place, use that relative and incomplete
freedom which the new government is introducing and which only
a more persistent and stubborn further revolutionary struggle can secure and extend.

It is necessary that all the working masses of the countryside and the town,
as well as the army, should learn the truth about the present government
and its real attitude to the urgent questions. It is necessary
to organise Soviets of Workers’ Deputies and to arm the
workers, it is necessary to extend the proletarian organisations
to the army (to which the new government also promises political rights)
and to the countryside; it is necessary, in particular, to organise a separate class organisation of agricultural wage
workers.

Only by informing the broadest masses of the population and organising them will the complete victory of the next stage
of the revolution and the conquest of power by a workers’ government be ensured.

To fulfil this task, which in a revolutionary time and under the influence of the hard lessons of the war may be assimilated
by the people in an immeasurably shorter time than under ordinary conditions, the ideological and organisational independence
of the party of the revolutionary proletariat, which has remained
faithful to internationalism and has not succumbed to the lie of bourgeois
phrases that deceive the people with talk of “defence of the fatherland” in the present
imperialist, predatory war, is necessary.

Not only the present government, but also a democratic bourgeois republican government, even if it consisted only of
Kerensky and other Narodnik and “Marxist” social-chauvinists, is unable to deliver the people from the imperialist
war and guarantee peace.

Therefore we cannot enter into any blocs, or alliances,
or even agreements with the defencist workers, nor with the trend
of Gvozdyov-Potresov-Chkhenkeli-Kerensky and the like, nor with people
who, like Chkheidze, etc., occupy a wavering and indefinite
position on this fundamental question.

Such agreements would not only introduce falsehood into the consciousness of the masses and make them dependent on the imperialist bourgeoisie of Russia, but
would also weaken and undermine the leading role of the proletariat
in the work of delivering the peoples from imperialist wars and guaranteeing
a really durable peace between the workers’ governments of all countries.